Shenyang / Chengdu "6th Gen" Aircraft - News and Analysis

So, it's single seat then? The J-36 is either bigger than we thought, it's still two seat but the cockpit looks small due to it's size, or if the size is not that far from the J-20 as some claim (still considerably larger in volume, but not on dimensions) it's single seat.
 
It is agile and snappy enough in that sunset landing video.

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Also the su34-esque double bogie setup and cockpit glazing is giving me strong izdeliye701 vibes. Imagine a similar long range interceptor but stealthy and with the ability to super cruise for extended intervals. Also could be useful as a quarterback for one or two flights of drones.
 
minimes said:
1st, Hezbollah is a bad example. Israel never intend a full scale invasion more like bluffing.
2nd, Russia lack precision attack ability serious undermined the significance of air supremacy.
What happen when your enemy has air supremacy and good precision attack ability?
The modern war is system vs system, now with drones part the system, the cost of winning the war is much higher than before.
It doesn't mean air supremacy is obsolete.
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I never said that it was, it's just that the overall picture is now considerably more complicated.
 
VTOLicious said:
Side-by-side seating arrangement? I'm not convinced... On this screenshot the canopy looks too narrow. Note the large lateral distance between the canopy and the edge of the nose!
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I still think it's a double seater. It's hard to see but there's a shape that looks like a pilot sitting in the left seat.

It's not like they have to have the ESO/WSO/drone controller sitting inside right now anyway, the plane clearly doesn't even have a radar installed yet.
 
VTOLicious said:
Side-by-side seating arrangement? I'm not convinced... On this screenshot the canopy looks too narrow. Note the large lateral distance between the canopy and the edge of the nose!
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No, I'm all the more convinced that it's a side by side seater. Firstly, longitudinal frame element is pretty apparent in the video. Secondly, the reflections caused by canopy curvature in this particular angle is minimizing the apparent size of the frontal plane of the windscreen but even so it is much wider than anything you would see on a singleseater. There is no single seater that would warrant the windscreen to wide enough to even be planar in the first place.
 
snne said:
I still think it's a double seater. It's hard to see but there's a shape that looks like a pilot sitting in the left seat.

It's not like they have to have the ESO/WSO/drone controller sitting inside right now anyway, the plane clearly doesn't even have a radar installed yet.
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I absolutely expect a side-by-side seating arrangement, but the latest video snapshots made me reconsider my assumption. Let's see how it turns out... A few months ago no one expected three engines and a combination of caret and dorsal intakes.
 
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Deino said:
I don't think so
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I am confused, are you saying that we cannot claim the J-36 has been seen flying with its gear retracted? Because we also have that image of the fuel dumping this morning -- the very image you linked earlier -- and its fairly clear from the continuous OML that the landing gear is retracted there. Even if for some reason in this particular sequence only the nose gear has been left extended (seems incredibly unlikely to have independent controls between main and nose gear; still doesnt explain why the last frame has absolutely no indication of the hitherto conspicuous gear bay doors), it does not seem sufficient to patently disprove the assertion that the J-36 has been seen flying with its gear retracted.
 
I think it's a matter of that angle
 

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Airborne2001 said:
I may be reaching, but I wonder if the mass test flights happening right now are in response to the F-47 announcement.
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Almost certainly unrelated. You do not fly test articles just for political reasons. How much you publicize those flights changes; how those are scheduled is far below the political level.
 
Airborne2001 said:
I may be reaching, but I wonder if the mass test flights happening right now are in response to the F-47 announcement.
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Why would CAC do such a ludicrous thing in response to something that doesn't even exist yet? Unlike China, they haven't even built a production-representative prototype yet.


Otherwise, they would've presented it in a B-21-style official ceremony. Nowadays, even their ISR platforms don't stay as hidden as before.


As a very short answer, they simply fly it whenever they need new data or are ready to move on to the next thing on the timeline.
 
siegecrossbow said:
How else can I get people to scrutinize every second of the video?
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You didn't answer the question.

If it is 1:20 minute mark, I think the quality is not quite good enough to confirm anything. It's possible at that timestamp the aircraft is raising its landing gear, but it might also just be the aircraft's movement making the landing gear more difficult to make out.

Personally I don't think it's that a big deal whether its landing gear has been raised or not, but if it's a milestone people want to actually wait for I think it's better to just see when an actually clear video or image is released.


NMaude said:
Tell that to the CCP.
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It's mostly foreign/outside projection who believe that and read too much into things.
 

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